The Haunting of Sunshine Girl

Chapter 4

It's mid-day, sunny for once, and Sunshine is sitting inside, wondering why such weird things have to happen to her.

Last night's events were definitely shaking. Sunshine can't get it off of her mind. She can't forget the jigging door handle, the loud bangs pounding on the door, or the ice that spread through her limbs. She still feels fuzzy. Her eyes are dark and droopy while her face stays pale.

She tries to tie up her appearance with a bow in her hair but realizes it probably does nothing. Sigh. She's going to have to do this video, isn't she?

The camera flashes red and Sunshine adjusts her seat on the bed. "Hello," she says hazily, tilting her head. "So, update on everything. I want to tell you a little bit about why whe moved to this particular house." She raises her arms and looks around. "Because," Sunshine continues, "now, you know, it seems crazy that we'd even pick this house. You saw the outside, and it's not an attractive place."

She shakes her head and sighs. "So, when we were living back where we.. well, lived, my mom was really busy with work and stuff so she asked me to go and look at some houses." Sunshine breathes. "I went, drove around a bunch of them, and when I got out of the car at this place.. I had a feeling." Her eyes flicker. "I don't know how to describe it. It's kind of, I don't know, weird?"

Sunshine turns her head to look out of the window. "It's strange. I looked through the whole house and liked it a lot — the feeling was there the whole time I was here. And I thought it was gonna be for the good, but I don't know, maybe now it's.. for the bad, I'm not sure." She looks down, playing with her jacket. "So, yeah, we picked this house and moved in and you all know what's been going on. Creepy stuff — like crazy lady.. but, I don't know."

She shifts upward, staring at the camera with her mouth flopped. "Maybe it will get better."
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Sunshine is talking to the camera again. People want her to post more but — well, don't they understand that she has a life? Besides, most of the videos she tapes are pretty boring (She's still bitter about the M&Ms).

What really pisses her off the most is the idea — more than that, the rumor — that her videos are fake. I mean, what's fake? Is she fake? Is the house fake? Her room, her mother? All the vitamin water she drinks?

It's ridiculous. None of it is fake.

Though sometimes she wishes it was.
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"So, guys, I had this thought — it was a dream kind of thing, like —"

Sunshine is standing near her door, then visibly stops, hands shaking the camera. "What — is that..."

Her face is slick with sweat as she shuts the light off. The camera splutters and a red glitch contorts the view. She turns the screen around and — oh, what, what in the world is that? It's a white, pale figure with some kind of cloth wrapped around its body, and it's standing a little far off but it — it terrifies her. The screen glitches loudly and a muffled, demonic voice speaks.

Sunshine backs away and runs, heart pumping out of her chest. She tells herself it's okay, that she can deal with this, that she just needs to stay calm.

Yeah, how did that work with the door incident?

She practically stumbles down the stairs into the kitchen, closing her eyes, grimacing. But when she arrives in the living room she sees the back door is open. Why — her mother isn't down here. What the hell is going on?

Sunshine nears the screen door, trembling. She can't see anyone outside, so quickly shuts it and tries to pretend nothing happened. The screen flickers with white and red.

Then, the front door opens. Sunshine gasps, wheeling around, green eyes wide. It creaks and lets the cool wind flow through the house, ruffling her hair as she closes in the gap. A demonic scream echoes in her ears when the back door slams open again. Sunshine whimpers, caught between two worlds, fear overtaking her every move and thought.

She — she can't — "Hello?" she calls, voice breathy and quivering. No one. There's no one there. She reaches for the door when it swipes in her face, causing a scream to shake her throat and her hands to cover her cheeks.

"I can't — Mom! I can't do this, I can't —"

The screen glitches over her face and her voice, shaping her head to be angled and wavy. Red streaks burst through the camera and it sticks in the same place, stuck on her "can't".

The screen turns black. Sunshine doesn't even realize her camera had malfunctioned until later. She hadn't noticed the static when she was recording. That's — that's weird, right? That doesn't usually happen, does it?

Her camera is completely dead now. She figures this out once her mother has calmed her down and kissed her forehead, tucking her in to the bed.

The next morning, Sunshine doesn't recognize the familiar blinking red light so decides to off-load all of the footage from last night. At least, that's what she'd meant to receive. Instead, a minute long looped picture of her comes through — at least, she thinks it's her. It's her face, red and surrounded with shadows, but her eyes — her eyes are black. She looks absolutely terrifying.

It looks like she's gonna need to get a new camera.

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New camera!

What's the first thing she does?

Record, of course.
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Wow, her mind is so jumbled. She really needs to vent.

Well, for now, she can make a mind file of the things she knows and what happened from that horrible night's events. For one, she has a nice new camera that hopefully won't go AWOL like her old one. Her mom wasn't very happy though. Yeah, Sunshine literally has no money.

Next, the house has been surprisingly quiet. It seems to happen every time she freaks out — maybe the ghosts are showing her a little compassion, just chilling. For now, at least, but Sunshine can take that.

She's not quite ready to call in an official, professional person to bless the house or whatever, maybe tell her at least what's in here, but... she just needs a while. A pastor can always come later, right?

Sunshine purses her lips, thinking back to the other night's incident. She isn't sure why she'd freaked out so much — she's a big girl — because the doors opening and closing isn't exactly a new occurance. In fact, that's why Sunshine had started the videos in the first place.

Well, the figure and the staticy thing — that's new. Very new, and very unwelcoming.

She sighs and runs a hand through her hair. She needs a few more days to screw her head on straight before she starts recording again. Maybe then, she'll know what to do, and will have a clearer vision on her goal for the house. Because truly, all she wants is to solve this mystery and find out why this house attracts so many spirits and, possibly, bad entities.

How bad can it be?